Your One Stop Blog Shop

By Dave White

Yeah, you can go to Crimespot and check out all the new posts that are up there. Of course you can. And that's fine and dandy, I love the site.

But if you do go there, you're actually going to have to read the blogs. And, as I've riffed on before, blogs really only have a few repeatable topics... So, instead of shooting on over there, I'll give a rundown of what you can read on blogs almost every day. (BTW, on my blog you can probably discover that I've written about 90% of this topics as well.... except the first one.)

HOW TO WRITE A SEX SCENE:

My favorite. This one ALWAYS shows up. And it always starts off like this, right after the "SEX" subject line: "Well, now I've got your attention, right?" HO HO! Wink Wink Nudge Nudge. That's right folks. Writers who read blogs for advice are really just a bunch of adolescents walking into their first sex ed class.

SO AND SO IS AWESOME:

He is. I love his books. He's been really helpful in my career. He's a really nice guy. In fact, he's awesome. And you can read about it on at least one blog each day. So, instead of reading each post... just read it here and remember it... SO AND SO is awesome.

SELF-PUBLISHING

If you've ever self-published a book, you know how FREAKING AWESOME it is. HOW MUCH BETTER IT IS than publishing in New York. I mean, you can SPEND YOUR OWN MONEY to put a shabbily edited book out there. And it's so much better than big publishing because, I mean, you wrote the book and you published it, and you're not biased at all right? I mean John Grisham sold his book out of his trunk and look at him now...

BIG TIME PUBLISHING IS THE DEVIL

Nevermind the fact that they paid you money to put your book out there. And edited it to the finest detail. And gave you a great, professional cover. And you can find it in REAL bookstores. They really screwed you over because they didn't give you co-op. They didn't send you on a national tour. And they didn't take an ad out in the Sunday Book Review. Hence publishing is the devil.

KINDLE vs. REAL BOOKS

KINDLE is awesome. No REAL BOOKS are awesome. No KINDLE. No REAL BOOKS. Either one is going to RESHAPE AND FIX PUBLISHING.

WHAT IS NOIR?

This is a 45,000 word essay about the intracacies of a noir novel and how the word translates into black so it must be a DARK book. And everyone is screwed. And honestly, deep down, does it really matter? Because there will then be 400 comments and no conclusions will be made. Except someone will decide this post is actually about "What is hardboiled?"

WRITING IN THE OPPOSITE GENDER

It's so hard. I can't think like a woman. No wait, I can. But I can't think like a man. Women are crazy. Men suck.

THRILLER WRITER SO AND SO SUCKS

James Patterson sucks because his chapters are short. Dan Brown sucks because he writes in italics. Let's face it, the writer of this blog (even me) is jealous because they sell millions upon millions of copies and the writer doesn't.

LITERARY VS. GENRE

GENRE is a red headed ugly step child that deserves to be chained up to a rusty radiator in the basement. OR But LITERARY, why won't you appreciate meeeeee???

PROMOTION

TWITTER WORKS HERE'S HOW! FACEBOOK WORKS HERE'S HOW! BLOGS WORK HERE'S HOW!!! I know how to promote and it's all I'm going to talk about...ignoring the fact that an average reader doesn't care about promotion and my book only sold 1,000 copies in the first year it was out.


And finally:

BARRY EISLER or JASON STARR or JASON PINTER have really nice hairdos. And SARAH WEINMAN is a DEITY from CANADA!


And there you have it.

There are a lot of good blogs out there... and a lot of good topics to read through.

But sometimes it feels like this is all there is. So, maybe, before you sit down to write your own blog post... think and see if what you're writing about has been talked about ad naseum. Can you say something new about this topic?